There is no simple desalination process if you mean remove salt from ocean water rendering it into drinkable water. Also not every method for cleaning water will work in every environment nor does every method clear up all the problems you can face. It's often a combination of methods that is the most effective.

Also one of the issues of clean water is making sewage into clean water. Cleaning up the sewage so it goes back clean into nature is something that still eludes most of humanity.

As for malaria a lot of it does indeed have to do with training and getting those involved to actually listen to experts. Malaria nets for example have been known for a long time to be incredibly but there are entire warehouses full of them in Africa unused because the people refuse to use them. Instead they insist on spraying DDT around which is worthless since mosquitoes have become immune to it like bedbugs did back around the late 1940s early 1950s. DDT has made the malaria problem worse in many countries since it killed off the insects that were eating the mosquitoes and well the other effects of DDT on crops and wildlife.

When the people in these areas started to use the mosquito nets instead of spraying DDT and other pesticide they started to see a dramatic decrease in the mosquito population and reduction of malaria infections. These nets have been known to work for decades and they are quite cheap. As I said there are warehouses full in Africa of donated ones that are still good since the nets last for years and years and are cheap to make.

While desalination remains not that cheap and easy to do on a large scale, there is one very simple passive solar powered device that under good conditions produces enough drinkable water from brackish or salty water to provide a child's daily need.
It is called a Watercone, and essentially uses the heat of the sun, evaporation and condensation to remove the salt.

Here is a link to the device website, with pictures and video of the device in use:
http://www.thewatercone.com/Index.html



My take is that our crunching will result in a freely available database that will allow filter designers to maximize the purity of formerly really filthy contaminated water on a large scale.

The goal is to have as many citizens of the planet as possible have access to the kind of readily available pure drinking water that has been available in first world cities for decades. UNICEF reportedly says that five-thousand children die every day because of diarrhea caused by contaminated water. That human misery can be prevented as more effective water purification methods become widely available. The database from our crunching hopefully will help that purer water to be made.

Brackish water usually has a lower saline content then sea water and IU's available in large quantities in many areas. With the lower saline content it will take less energy to make into potable water. Also who is still manufacturing DDT? Seems like we have not learned are lesson with that chemical! The research fo C4CW like all research may come up with results that help in other areas then intended or indicate that this line of research is not worth pursuing saving others in the future valuable time, effort and resources. That is why even negative results are worth publishing.